Increasingly, non-English speaking countries are deploying software. However, software has typically been designed with little or no thought towards internationalization or localization. Instead, software has been predominantly developed using English as the primary language for its interface. Nonetheless, as the international market for software grows, there is a need in improving the process of internationalization and localization of a software product for global use. Internationalization is the adaptation of products for potential use globally. Software localization is a process of translating software user interfaces from one natural language to another and adapting it to suit a foreign culture.
In order to perform localization, the current prevailing practice is for applications to place text in resource strings, which are loaded during program execution as needed. These strings, stored in resource files, are intended to be relatively easy to translate. Programs are then built to reference resource files depending on the desired language. For example, Linux and UNIX programs use the well known “gettext” internationalization library.
Thus, to get an application to support multiple languages one would design the application to select the relevant language resource file at runtime. Resource files are translated to the required languages. This method is application-specific.
Unfortunately, accurate localization of a software application is a difficult, time and labor intensive process. This process often requires significant effort from development teams. There are tools that can simplify the localization process. However, even with these tools, a software vendor must essentially manually “translate” software for international use. Typically, a developer must undergo a tedious multi-step process to perform and verify translations. For example, the developer must edit the resource file, compile it, and restart the application to verify their changes. When translating the resource strings, the intended meaning is difficult to ascertain. This is because the developer does not have the benefit of viewing the strings in the context of the running application. This technique has generally led to poor translations or translations that do not make sense at certain points within the application.
For example, the English language includes many homonyms, which are words having the same sound and spelling but have different meanings. This makes translating English a difficult process because it requires repeated testing and verification.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved foreign language translation tool that can assist a software developer in localizing an application.